As an IT pro, you know that data breach is a real risk. Your clients, however, probably haven’t thought about it as much. If your job is to keep them productive and their data safe, you must know how to broach the topic of data breach. Here’s an approach that will help them understand the risks they face and encourage them to invest in prevention.

Give Them the Facts

Some of your clients probably think IT disaster won’t happen to them—until it does. Having that “uh-oh” moment might motivate them to invest in solutions after the fact, but how do you get them to start thinking about data breach before it happens? It’s best to give it to them straight, using some hard facts:

Between Jan, 2017 and March, 2018, 1.9 billion records containing sensitive data have been compromised. 75 percent of them by external hackers (org).

In 2018, it cost companies an average of a $148 for a single stolen record (Privacy Rights.org).

In 2018, it took companies an average of 197 days to identify a data breach and 69 days to contain it (IBM).

These facts show that data breach is a growing problem, but your goal in sharing these figures shouldn’t be to scare clients. Instead, help them understand that data breach is a serious threat they should act on before it’s too late.

To meet challenges like ransomware, IT organizations need a comprehensive storage management and data protection solution providing immutable backups for physical and virtual environments. Moreover, in a recovery scenario, every second of downtime impacts the organizations’ bottom line and, consequently, in a recovery scenario every second counts.

Data security has come a long way since its early days of simple scans and firewalls. Though there are certain older tools and techniques that are still valuable today, there are other methods of security that every single business should be employing. Here are seven of those:

1.Perfect Your Passwords

At the top of the security list is proper passwords. Enlist the help of a generator and password manager that can keep everyone’s passwords in order. Be sure to enforce strict policies against sending passwords via email, and set parameters that force employees to use lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

2. Lock Down Every Laptop

Encryption is key to keeping data out of the hands of hackers. Passwords are key to keeping laptop data safe from thieves

3.Stay on Top of Updates and Patches

Stick to a daily schedule of checking for updates and patches, so you never leave holes in your systems for hackers to exploit.

While many top leaders now tout the value of data to their organizations, there may a distinct lack of enthusiasm by rank-and-file employees for embracing data on a regular basis.

That disconnect can spell trouble for organizations that are trying to use data to be more competitive or innovative. Without complete employee buy-in, the data-integration efforts may fall short or even fail.

One of the reasons for the lack of employee enthusiasm surrounding data may be that leaders haven’t made the case that data is an important part of the organization’s culture. A company’s culture – seen as unique and a key way to emotionally energize employees – can be a critical element in getting employees to fully embrace using data to enhance their work and that of the organization.

Hacks happen all the time. The Global Threat Report released by Carbon Black estimates that in 2018, about 1 million cyberattacks per day were attempted. All businesses are at risk on a daily basis and need to take proper data security precautions. How you do so and which data you protect should all depend on their data classification. Here are the three main types of data classification, and how they differ from each other:

Confidential

“Confidential” data is any data that could harm the person or institution it belongs to if released without authorization. There are often federal legal stipulations regarding the protection of this type of information because of its extremely private manner.

Cyberattacks are escalating each year. No matter who you are, some of your personal information was probably compromised in 2018. Businesses have lost tens of millions. Data for billions of consumers is no longer secure. The security gaps in the online world are growing. Luckily, there are a number of startups putting a stop to the online thievery. Here are five companies changing the cyber security space.

Okta – Zero Trust Model

If you watch cybersecurity trends, you’ve heard of the zero-trust model. Essentially, the zero-trust model is what it sounds like: it’s a cybersecurity approach wherein a network trusts no one and will not give access to any data whatsoever until a user is authorized. Okta is one of Gartner’s leaders in access management thanks to their modern approaches to network access, including the zero-trust model. Their products range from single-sign-on to multifactor authentication, lifecycle management and more. If you’re looking for an architecture that trusts no one, there’s a good chance Okta can help.

Organizations are under pressure to make decisions faster than ever before, and often rely on data to make those decisions.

While companies may believe that’s a sound strategy, it actually may be harming their ability to compete and come up with innovative solutions, experts say.

The reason is because many business leaders seem to abandon their business acumen when confronted with data, so they’re not making decisions that truly move an organization forward. Instead, because they are intimidated by the data or don’t really understand how to use it effectively, they become mired in “safe” decisions that don’t drive necessary change.

In a recent Columbia Business School webinar, Prof. Oded Netzer, Google management consultant Paul Magnone and American Express Vice President Christopher Frank explained how the strategy works:

1. Precision questioning. “Don’t expect the data to provide both the question and the answer,” Frank says. “Ask yourself: ‘What do I wish I knew?’ What is the most essential business problem? Do a quick check around the table and ask: ‘Do we all have the same understanding?’ You may find that you’re all asking different questions because you have a different outcome in mind.”

2.Pattern recognition. Magnone suggest leaders always put data in context. How does it compare to the competition? How does it compare to something the organization has done in the past?

3.Parallel/holistic view. Netzer says too many teams simply summarize data and then ask “What do you think?” instead of using their business knowledge and judgment to make some conclusions. Instead of just summarizing data information which is “easier” and “risk-less,” he suggests synthesizing information, which calls for making a conclusion about the data and then supporting your viewpoint with two or three supporting facts.

Over the years in IT, we’ve all had tasks become more efficient due to the improvements and evolution in technology. Heck, even a fairly recent college grad in an IT-based major can attest to technological changes over their time in school to their present career position. Conversations with other IT professionals who’ve been in the industry for 25 years or more bring up recollections of writing Cobol and RPG programs on punch card machines, using 8”, 5.25”, and 3.5” floppy drives, night-long backup sessions that wrote to reel-to-reel tape machines, buying the new Computer Shopper magazine (that thing was big enough to be used as a personal defense weapon), NetWare, no internet, and many other things a couple of graying geeks will quickly recall over a couple of drinks in the evening.

Yes! It’s always fun remembering the good ole days.

But we all must remember those “good ole days” also fit the opening line of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”, which also had a second side …

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …”

So, what about the worst of times? Who can erase those bad memories from a tech age gone by?

A notable bad memory from the day, and I’m sure most would agree with me, was the dreaded “DR Test.”

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